29 March 2006

Philip Pullman on libraries

There was a good promotional article on libraries and librarians in The Times on Saturday. Though I don't think Philip realises quite how much librarians are involved in bringing information online and improving the quality of online information (not to mention providing online access within libraries).

24 March 2006

Still in Washington...

Got a chance to go beyond the hotel and meeting rooms today and paid a visit to the National Building Museum, which is housed in an amazing building, once the Pension Bureau (paying pensions to men who fought in the American Civil War). The museum's exhibits used a good mixture of archives and artifacts. There was a hands-on part where you could try to build a brick wall using various different brick bonding patterns. Noticed the sign below on my way round the building, which made me think of EAD.

17 March 2006

Spokes software now available

We are delighted to announce that the Spokes software is now ready to download for testing. You can preview the software on our test Spoke here in Manchester (which has a random selection of various repositories' records at the moment). We'll post URLs of other Spokes as repositories make them available to the public. You can download the software from http://sca.lib.liv.ac.uk/downloads/ead/3.0/. Full instructions are available from the Hub site, whether you are installing for the first time or updating an existing Spokes 3.0 installation.
We took this photograph from our office, by the way.

15 March 2006

Paying for publicly funded data

An interesting story in last week's Guardian about the cost to the economy of buying back data which has been created using public money (OS maps, Highways Agency video feeds and so on). It contrasts the situation in the UK with that of the US, where this kind of data is available free of charge and has resulted in the creation of innovative services like Google Maps.

09 March 2006

Archives Hub Contributors' Training Day

On the 10 April 2006 we'll be holding a training day for people who would like to contribute information about their archives to the Archives Hub. The Hub's scope is archives held in UK universities and colleges, so the training is aimed at people working in such institutions. The training day covers the process of creating EAD descriptions of archives using the Hub's online template. It also includes a very nice free lunch at Manchester Business School.

Romani Project

I had a chat today with Professor Yaron Matras of the University's new Romani Project. I remember Yaron as a regular visitor to the University of Liverpool's Special Collections and Archives when I was working on the Gypsy Lore Society Collections there years ago. The Romani Project is doing some innovative and important stuff for linguistic research - not to mention a helping preserve a language that is under threat - and it's about time there was a Collections of the Month feature on the Roma, but so far I've only come with up June as a possible slot, because of the Appleby Horse Fair. Any suggestions or contributions would be gratefully received!

03 March 2006

Paws for thought

Subject to debate

I was reading in March's Museums Journal about plans for next year's bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. We do have material on the Hub about the Atlantic slave trade, plantation owners, and abolitionists.

However, 1807 marked the end of a specific historical instance of
slavery, not the end of slavery itself. We shouldn't forget that slavery is still alive and well all over the world - and still big business in this country. Remember the Morecambe Bay cockling deaths? Or heard about forced prostitution?

I'd be glad if a Hub contributor could put together a Collections of the Month feature on slavery in all its forms. I just think it's a bit premature for celebrations.